Freak369's Full Review: Sanford Mirado Pencils 2 Medium Soft Lead Dozen
Before automatic pencils were all the rage, we had the plain old wooden pencil. You had to stand in line at the beginning of class to sharpen them and the points always seemed to break at the worst possible time. If that weren’t bad enough, the erasers never lasted long enough and the replacement ones that slipped on the ends of them never worked as well as the ones that came with the pencil. Necessity was my only reason for buying PaperMate’s Mirado. My youngest waited until the last possible minute to tell me that he needed pencils for a test he was taking; they needed to be actual pencils, not automatic or mechanical ones. Having about twenty minutes to get him to the testing center I ran into Rite Aid and this was the first pencils that I saw that were pre sharpened so I grabbed them. There were only four in a pack and the other PaperMate ones had ten to a pack but these were sharpened - and time was running short!.
PaperMate Mirado 2HB
I didn’t get to try these out until after my son took the test and parted with them. He is a die hard fan of mechanical and automatic pencils and it’s rare that he raves about a wood pencil but this one was something that he really liked writing with. The test was about five hours long and was mostly fill in the blank stuff but there were some essay questions. He said that he really liked the way the lead performed and that it didn’t smudge even when he had to erase a large section. I am pretty hard on pencils, the wooden ones always get bite marks in them and the erasers never last more than a week. When I snagged two of these off of him to use them I was really impressed with them. First off, they sharpen to a precise point and the lead rarely snaps no matter how hard you press on it. It doesn’t smudge either; one thing I hate about some of the automatic pencils is the lead is so dense that it smears all over the place when you are writing. Since these are made of cedar they are a little lighter than most other wooden pencils but let’s face the fact here - wooden pencils aren’t all that heavy to start with.
Since these are made of cedar and are lighter in weight you might also notice that the feel of the point is a little ‘softer’ - not meaning that the wood itself is soft but the feel of it isn’t rough once you have sharpened it. The lead that’s inside it is 2 HB and when my son asked the proctor for the test if these were acceptable he said that they were but if you are taking a computer scored test or have a child that is, you will want to ask about the exact type of pencil that they need. The lead is non toxic and conforms to the PMA [Pencil Makers Association] guidelines as well as the ASTM, another interesting tidbit about these is that the wood is not harvested from a rainforest source. I thought that was an odd thing to list on the package but it seems that this is a growing trend amongst pencil manufacturers to add this. But come on, have you ever heard of a cedar tree growing in a rainforest? Nah, I didn’t think so.
I grabbed these at Rite Aid - at a time when all of the other school supplies were on sale for a fraction of what these cost - but they were the only ones that were sharpened and I didn’t have time to mess around with getting a sharpener and dealing with broken points. They were $1.29 and that might not sound like a big deal but there are only four pencils in a pack. The other PaperMate pencils were on sale for .99 cents for a ten pack and would have probably been just as good for the test but - again - the Mirado’s were sharpened. I am sure that you could get these for less if you shopped at an office supply store but at the time I needed something immediately. Now that I have used these for a couple of weeks I really like them and I plan on buying a box of them the next time I place an order online at Shoplet. They will be great for sketching and for the brood to use when they have these types of computer scored tests and to be honest, I like the way they write.
The Bottom Line
Usually wooden pencils don’t impress me but these did. They write perfectly, sharpen to a fine point and while they may cost more than regular pencils, to me they are worth it. As I said, I will be ordering a box of these online in the near future and I am sure that everyone in the house will make use of them when they need a standard pencil. These come with a money back guarantee that if you are not satisfied with them, Sanford, the parent company [a division of Newell Rubbermaid] will replace them or refund your money no questions asked. They are made in the U.S.A and with a money back guarantee you really don’t have anything to lose if you decide to give these a try. If you are someone that uses pencils but haven’t found one that writes perfectly and sharpens to a fine point without breaking then give the Mirado a try!
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